Where No App Has Gone Before

One of the most difficult things I had to do when I taught freshman English classes was to define plagiarism. 

The standard working definition is taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.  Of course, if such a definition were ever codified as law, just about everyone would be guilty.  After all, so many things most of us say in the course of a day come from Shakespeare, the Bible or other works of literature--or are simply familiar utterances from famous or anonymous folks. As often as not, people aren't aware of the source of whatever they've said, even as they acknowledge that "there is nothing new under the sun."

So I have to wonder how the world would be different if some patent or intellectual-property attorney had too much time on his or her hands in Waterloo, Wisconsin in 1975.  Would Dick Burke and Bevil Hogg have been sued for naming their new bicycle company Trek?

I mean, even if they weren't "Trekkies," I'm sure they would've known about the iconic space-travel series.  Then again, I don't know how Gene Roddenberry would have heard about a couple of latter-day hippies building bikes in the Midwest as the '70's North American Bike Boom was losing steam--or how inclined he would have been to sic lawyers on them.  Somehow, I think the folks at Paramount Television Studios, which purchased Desilu, the original producers of Star Trek, would have been even less likely to know what a couple of dudes in "flyover country" were up to.

What if he'd built bikes?

From what I've read, the company's founders claimed that their choice of name had nothing to do with Captain Kirk's vehicle.  Ironically, Hogg wanted to name the company Kestrel--which would become the name of another bike maker that, a decade later, would pioneer the carbon fiber and fork design on which Trek would still later base their carbon-fiber offerings.

So, I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or cringe when I learned that Trek challenged Jchon Perkins' registration of his trademark name--Prize Trek--for a mobile game app.  Players "participate in a scavenger hunt and win valuable cash (sic) and prizes sponsored by local businesses" according to an Associated Press article.  It is, the article claimed, "a powerful marketing tool that can provide small businesses with free advertising for life."

In 2018, when Perkins applied to register "Prize Trek" with the US Patent and Trademark Office, Trek Bicycle filed an opposition, claiming Perkins' trademark could too easily be confused with theirs.  The following year, the USPTO overruled Trek's opposition and granted Perkins his trademark.

Last year, he sued Trek Bicycles, claiming their opposition had delayed the app's development and market entry.  On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Janet Neff ordered the case dismissed. So Perkins has his trademark, but the app doesn't seem to be available to the public just yet. 

Whatever comes of the app, this story is quite the Trek, I mean, journey.